Friday, December 14, 2007

With the recent hikes in airline fuel surcharge and other items, the airline tickets have once again gone beyond the point of usual affordability.

A ticket to Hyderabad from Chennai that used to cost around Rs.1200-1500 some time ago is now at a whopping Rs.2500 or so (including all kinds of taxes, surcharge, etc). The 12hr train journey in a 3 tier A/C compartment at Rs.800 or so looks much more attractive now when compared to the 1hr flight journey.

Is this the death knell of the LCC or is there a chance of things coming back to "normal" ?

I noticed just a day ago that access to toll free 1800 numbers from Airtel mobile phones has been working. It wasn't certainly the case a few months ago. Anyone knows since when it has been working and/or whether there's a catch to this ?

There's something weird happening in the Indian car battery industry - from a layman's perspective.

Back in Mar-2005 time frame, I bought an Exide Express 1.5years warranty car battery for around Rs.2300 or so. A few weeks ago, when I tried getting a new one, the price was close to Rs.4400 or so for the same type and warranty period.

I ended up buying an Amaron which cost me Rs.3800 (after getting an exchange of Rs.300 for my old exide express battery) and it has a 1.5yr replacement guarantee and a pro-rated exchange 1.5yr warranty period after that. Definitely a better deal (but then, Amaron is a newer entrant compared to Exide).

Anyway, What's wrong with prices shooting sky high in such a short period ? What is the rational - if someone knows, can you please let me know ?

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Sudhir Parasuram is an employee of HCL Technologies Ltd, working for Cisco Systems Inc. Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved by others before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.